Category: News from the Center Director

Hello Center Members and Friends:

As we get close to spring break on campus (in two weeks) it is im-pressive to see the growth of our program and the energy of the stu-dents this semester. We have 80 students now in our department and many are majoring in Forest Products Business. Firms are al-ready on campus interviewing for summer internships and full-time positions. I think this is a great indicator of our economy’s and the industry’s resurgence. We will graduate around 25 students in the spring, so if your companies are looking for full time employees, please contact us to set up interviews.

On a personal note, last fall our department head in Sustainable Biomaterials stepped down and the dean has asked me to take it on for a while, so I am currently acting as in-terim department head of our program. It is nice to be working regularly with my colleagues in the department again and seeing students on a more regular basis. Students are busy with the Wood Enterprise Institute where they will be designing, manufacturing and marketing 3 different products this year. The packaging science program continues to grow and students are learning to efficiently design and build packaging for the products we ship around the world.

Currently our faculty are working on such items as energy savings in mills, international marketing efforts, lumber use in the pallet industry, secondary manufacturing issues, and a variety of topics in the area dealing with cellulosic chemistry. It always amazes me the breadth of our research areas in the department. But, they all have one common theme: Assisting the forest products industry in the sustainable development and use of our natural resources. Whether it is new products using cellulose, increasing manufacturing efficiencies in your mills, or developing new markets, our research efforts try to assist our industry in increasing its competi-tiveness.

In this newsletter is a listing of upcoming continual education classes, some industry news and a short article on energy savings research that Dr. Quesada and his students are doing in a secondary mill. There still remain a lot of areas in which mills can reduce their energy costs and this research shows another way to tackle the problem. If you have any questions regarding this newsletter or the Center, please feel free to contact me at 540-231-7679 or rsmith4@vt.edu.

To read the full news letter, please follow this link.

 

After one of the nicest winters on record in Blacksburg, we graduated approximately 5000 students this week from Virginia Tech. It is amazing how fast the semesters go by and new groups of students enter our college. Our programs continue to evolve to meet the needs of our students and to serve our industry partners. To better reflect what our faculty are doing and to broaden our appeal to students, the department’s name has been changed to the Department of Sustainable Biomaterials. New degree programs are being developed to reflect our changing needs of students and industry. We had several companies on campus this spring interviewing our students for summer internships and full time positions, which hopefully reflects an up-tick in our industry.

I have visited with many center members recently and there is a general feeling that our industry is slowly improving, but we will need to adjust to a smaller total domestic market for wood. I just taught our sales course at Oregon State University, and the class was fairly optimistic about the economy improving and companies are seeing an increase in export activity from the West coast. Those in the export market continue to see opportunities overseas. The market reports indicate now that over one-third of upper grade hardwoods are now ex-ported, and there is an increase in exports of softwood lumber. The housing predictors now say that it will be late in this decade before we get back to nor-mal housing starts and recent statistics show that houses are getting smaller.

All of this indicates that we need to work smarter, not necessarily harder. We need to get closer to our custom-ers and determine how we can serve them better, we need to be able to capture market opportunities when they arise, and to fine-tune our operations to be as efficient as possible. That is what our changes in the department are training our students to do. In this newsletter you will read about a project on energy auditing that is being led by Dr. Henry Quesada. Every dollar saved in energy or the elimination of any waste is a dollar right to the bottom line of the company. Dr. Earl Kline describes the efforts of the Wood Enterprise Institute (WEI), which is a student-run enterprise from market development to product manufacturing. It is a one-year program that allows our students to experience running a company, as well as dealing with company issues on a daily basis. The WEI is one way in which we are training our students to be better prepared to meet your needs.

I wish you a great summer and thank you for your continued support of our center. I hope you will visit us at our new web address (www.cfpb.vt.edu). If you have any questions, please contact me at rsmith4@vt.edu  or 540-231-7679.

Robert Smith
Director of the Center for Forest Products Business

To access the Spring 2012 newsletter, please follow this link

Blacksburg, VA. March 21, 2012. Dr. Henry Quesada-Pineda, assistant professor and assistant director of the Center of Forest Products Business at Virginia Tech participated in a short course for wood products companies in Hojancha, Costa Rica on March 6 and 15, 2012. The short course was organized conjointly by Virginia Tech, Costa Rica Tech, and the Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center (CATIE).

Dr. Henry Quesada-Pineda promotes Appalachian wood products in Costa Rica

More than 25 people attended the short course that included topics such as primary processing, product design, continuous improvement, and strategy and marketing planning. Dr. Quesada-Pineda presented results on a marketing research project funded by the Federal State Market Improvement Program (FSMIP) at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The main goal of the project was to uncover potential opportunities for Appalachian wood products in Central America and Costa Rica. Costa Rica consumes over 1.1 million m3 of lumber per year. Due to the country’s high regulations on the harvesting of natural forests, most of the demand is fulfilled with plantation lumber and imports.

The wood products industries located in the region of Hojancha, Costa Rica are well organized and they produce a variety of high value-added products such as solid furniture, log cabins, and souvenirs for the local and export market. The group is very interested in finding a good supply of hardwood lumber given the current situation with the local supply and it seems that Appalachian hardwoods could be a very good fit to fulfill the increasing demand.

If you wish to read the full report on the project Marketing Opportunities for Appalachian Wood Products in Central America, please contact Dr. Henry Quesada-Pineda at quesada@vt.edu

To see the full newsletter, click on the image below. 

It is starting to cool off, the students are taking all the parking spots, and the Hokies won their first football games of the season. Therefore, it must be fall in Blacksburg and classes are in full swing. We had an earthquake and hurricane hit the state within one week, which many believe has something to do with our proximity to Wash-ington, D.C. The old Chinese saying, “May you live in interesting times,” is considered both a blessing and a curse. One thing is for certain, these are in-teresting times.

It is starting to cool off, the students are taking all the parking spots, and the Hokies won their first football games of the season. Therefore, it must be fall in Blacksburg and classes are in full swing. We had an earthquake and hurricane hit the state within one week, which many believe has something to do with our proximity to Wash-ington, D.C. The old Chinese saying, “May you live in interesting times,”  is considered both a blessing and a curse. One thing is for certain, these are in-teresting times.

I wrote in our center annual report that if we listen to the media long enough, we should either hide in a cave or jump off a cliff. However, working with students on campus is refreshing, and they provide hope for our future. In my sales courses, I teach a section on staying positive, and here is a fact that I share during my presentations. Statistics (those numbers we make up to give creditability to what we are about to say) indicate that the average child smiles or laughs 300 times a day before the age of five. The average adult smiles less than 30 times a day. Why the disparity? I believe that children don’t read the news and are not impacted by those around them as much as adults. I personally think this reduction in enjoyment is something we should be extremely concerned about. Of all the indicators of successful leadership, having and showing a positive atti-tude is one of the highest ranked traits (yes, more statistics).

Continue reading “Newsletter: Center Focus Fall 2011”

Letter from the Director

I always enjoy sitting down and writing this letter. It reminds me of why I joined higher education after 15 years in the private sector, and why I love coming to work every day. It’s about the friendships we have established over the years and the hope that our work at the Center has positively impacted your businesses. Some of you have graduated from the department and now are leaders in your companies.

Some of you have used our research to make improved products to serve your customers better, and some of you have been supporters to help students meet their financial or educational needs. Whatever the reason, we greatly appreciate this great partnership which is now 20 years old. We are the oldest active industrial center in the college, and have changed over the years to meet your needs and our students’ needs for the 21st Century.

Continue reading “Center for Forest Products Business 2010-2011 Report Available”